


won't find my way back home tonight

by pinuspinea



Series: Swan Lake remixes [11]
Category: Swan Lake & Related Fandoms, Лебединое озеро - Чайковский | Swan Lake - Tchaikovsky
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Falling In Love, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Growing Up, Happy Ending, Healing, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27473470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinuspinea/pseuds/pinuspinea
Summary: In pure speculation, wouldn't it be fascinating if the kiddo was Siegfried's? How would that play out with Rothbart/Odile/Odette? How much would that one hurt? What would happen to that kid? It's be equal parts fascinating to see the child return to human society, banished by Rothbart, versus taken in by Rothbart and used as another tool against Odette - one that says, "you may have loved another man, but his child is mine."- Her_Madjesty
Relationships: Odette/Prints Siegfried | Prince Siegfried (Lebedínoye Ózero | Swan Lake), Odette/Von Rothbart (Lebedínoye Ózero | Swan Lake), Odile/Original Male Character, Odile/Prints Siegfried | Prince Siegfried (Lebedínoye Ózero | Swan Lake)
Series: Swan Lake remixes [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824241
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	won't find my way back home tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Her_Madjesty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/gifts), [Swan Lake comment club](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Swan+Lake+comment+club).



> Darling, you own me quite a lot of money for your comment that has been living in my brain for these past few weeks completely rent-free.

On the morning Odile's younger brother is born, von Rothbart takes one look at the child and storms out of the house. Odile keeps hiding in her little nook for a moment longer before she eventually realises her father isn't coming back, and only then does she even dare to approach her parents' bedroom.

Her mother is crying soundlessly while her brother is screaming his little lungs out. Odile stares at the blood in the room, at the sight of her powerless mother, at the emptiness left behind by her father.

Her spells are nowhere near the precision and beauty of her father's, but Odile knows enough about magic to heal her mother and to help her brother. She cannot stop her mother's tears, but she can at least help a little.

She takes a proper look at her brother only once her mother is no longer in danger of bleeding out and realises with a horrifying jolt that the drowned prince's face stares back at her. She gives her mother a nervous look, but she is curled up in herself, refusing to even acknowledge the child.

Odile takes her brother into her arms and leaves the room. Her head is spinning and she feels horrible, but that cannot be anything compared to the shock of her father or her mother.

She ends up where Siegfried was pulled into the lake, and the swans slowly surround her. Odile looks into their blank eyes and their dark feathers, and she looks at her brother. They want to have him, she knows. They want to drown him as well.

Odile is tired of death.

"We'll be fine, Bertram," she murmurs to the dead prince's child and smiles softly to him. He coos back at her, utterly unaware of the dangers awaiting his sister's permission, but Odile does not give it. Instead, she looks at the swan maidens and knows it is time to go back inside.

Their hands caress her dress as she leaves them, but they do not grasp at her, their new queen. They know better than that.

* * *

Her father seethes in his anger and refusal to acknowledge the child for many a long day and night. Odile spends those days taking care of her baby brother the best she can, and the quiet servants transformed from mice help her when she is too exhausted to think. Bertram is a strange child. His eyes are too dark and too wide and they see far too much for someone still that young. Those eyes are always nailed on someone, always refusing to look away, constantly keeping an eye on all of them.

If her father is absent, so is her mother. She has not left her parents’ rooms once since Bertram was born. Odile has been wondering if she is dead in the bed, but the servants are adamant that she is still breathing even though every time Odile tries to visit her mother, the door is locked and no one answers her knocks.

When a week passes and nothing changes, Odile thinks that it has been enough of a shock that her parents haven’t overcome it quite yet. When that week turns into another one, she finally starts to realise that things will not be changing any time soon.

Bertram is innocent, yet he is blamed for all the problems in the house. He is just a child, yet her parents do not even want to see him. Odile leans over the crib and meets her brother from eye to eye. He stares back with those strange eyes of his, with her mother’s eyes staring back from the face of the prince.

Odile looks at him and knows that no one could deny that the child is the prince’s bastard son. No one who looked at Bertram could ever deny such a fact, and perhaps once he grows a little older, he will look even more like his father.

Odile studies that tiny face in front of her and thinks that she could simply take him far away from here. She could give the child to someone else, somewhere where he could no longer remind her father about the mistakes of her mother, where he would no longer keep bringing sorrow into their lives.

Bertram would probably be happier in such a life, Odile thinks to herself. He would grow up with doting parents instead of being abandoned by everyone except for his sister, and he would have a father who would teach him all he needs to know and a mother who would kiss away his scrapes.

Such a life would be quite different than the childhood Odile had. Such a life could even solve other problems. If she brought the child to the dowager queen, the crisis of succession would pass. Siegfried´s child would solve all their problems and they would no longer have to worry about who should be the next person to sit on the throne.

Odile makes up her mind quickly and gathers Bertram into her arms. He sniffles a little but does not cry as she wraps him tightly in blankets. The night is cool and the trip is long on foot, but on foot she must go if she wants to give her brother a better life.

The heavy front doors creak as she manipulates them open one-handed. She is about to close the door as a voice stops her.

"Where are you taking him?"

Her father is looking at them both from the top of the stairs. Odile looks back at him, and then she looks at her brother. He is starting to get fussy from the draft and she tries to wrap him better into the warmth of the blankets, but he isn’t calming down.

Her father takes the child with surprising familiarity and manages to calm him down in just a few moments. His face is impassive as he studies the face of the babe, and Bertram looks up at him with those wide eyes of his and opens his toothless mouth and gurgles.

"Where were you taking him?" her father repeats the question. Odile’s shoulders slump. There is no lying to her father, no matter how uncomfortable answering would be.

His eyes are cold as they finally turn to her.

"To the palace," Odile mumbles mulishly. "So that the dowager queen could raise him."

Her father is quiet for a long moment and then steps away from the door, back inside the house. Odile knows better than to disobey and she follows the man into the nursery, the old room where she used to spend her childhood in before her father allowed her to move into a proper room of her own.

He does not put Bertram back into the crib, but neither does he look like he particularly wants to hold him much longer. Odile wonders for a while whether she should offer to hold Bertram again, but she thinks better of it.

"You do realise what it would look like if you showed up at the palace with the child, don’t you?" her father asks quietly. Odile hesitates until he sighs and looks at the child again. Bertram gurgles again, happily unaware of the tension in the room.

Her father looks thoughtful.

"I think I can forgive your mother for this mistake just like she has forgiven my mistakes," he muses to himself eventually.

Odile feels a shiver running down her spine, a shiver that promises only bad things are coming.

* * *

That morning, Odile is about to enter the nursery when she sees two shadows in the morning sun. She stops suddenly and listens anxiously to the hushed conversation between her parents. Most of what her mother says is unclear to her, but her father’s answer is as clear as the light of sun:

"You may have loved him, but his child is mine."

She dares to take in a peak and spies her mother locked in her father’s embrace. Her face is hidden by his magnificent coat, but her shoulders are shaking. Whatever she answers to her father, those words are lost forever to anyone but him.

Eventually, they pull apart a little. Odile counts to three before stepping closer as if she had never spied on her parents.

They do not seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.

Odile studies her mother’s face for a good while. Her eyes are first on her, and they are full of tired love, a love worn by all her hardships and years, but when those eyes turn towards Bertram, none of that warmth remains. Her eyes are vacant as she studies the child, as if neither was there, as if her eyes weren’t the same as on the babe’s face.

It’s a horrible look to see in her eyes. It almost reminds Odile of a childhood when she used to spy on her mother and father eternally traversing the shores of the lake, the childhood where her mother grew quieter and quieter until they all ended up here.

Bertram mustn’t have a childhood like that, Odile decides. Bertram shouldn’t have a childhood like that. Her mother is supposed to love her baby brother, but instead, she almost acts like he is some stranger’s babe.

"His name is Bertram," Odile blurts out. Her parents share a glance between one another. Her father looks almost curious, almost like he wants to see how her mother reacts to this, but she doesn’t. Her eyes remain as vacant as they have been. There is no new life in them, no burning love for the son of the dead prince. The gaze is vacant as if Odile is not there.

"Bertram it is," her father confirms and watches as her mother gives the child her finger. Bertram grasps it and coos happily.

When he lets go, Odette pulls it away and slips out of the room to the shores of the lake.

* * *

When Bertram is a month old, Odile finally realises she has not longed after the prince for a single second as she has been far too busy caring for her brother during that time. She puts down the spoon she has been using to stir her morning tea, and she stares blankly at her breakfast.

For a whole month she has not thought about that night at the ball when she danced with him, for a whole month she has not thought about those dark hours when her parents fought and she tried to understand, for a whole entire month she has not once had the horrible look on his face cross her mind as the swan maidens pulled him into the lake.

Odile feels sick and she pushes her chair back with a creak.

Outside, the morning is too beautiful for such horrible thoughts, but once she has started, she does not stop. She stomps her way to the lake and her hands rise. She murmurs dark spells, spells she never thought she’d end up using, and the swan maidens are pulled apart by her magic. Only dark feathers remain on the shore.

She destroys them all until every single one of those black swans is gone, and then she falls to her knees and wraps her arms around herself and cries.

Her father finds her there on the shores of the lake, her tears dried into streaks on her face, her face hard and emotionless, but with more inner peace than she has had in months. He sits down on the ground next to her and looks at her with worried eyes, but Odile does not look at him. Instead, she looks at the lake and knows that this is the final time that she will ever have to see the lake like this and remember what her anger lead to.

"Why would you tear them apart?" her father asks, but she does not give him an answer. There is nothing to say. If he cannot understand it, he would never understand any of her explanations.

That is why Odile remains mute on the shore of her former kingdom and knows that her fate must be hers to forge instead of letting others dictate it for her.

* * *

Their visitors are clearly curious about those months when few were ever let inside the house, and their curiosity is even worse when the rumours about what Odile's baby brother looks like spread. None of them ever speak to them about it, but Odile knows what those carefully chosen words hint at.

Her father is stoic and pretends that there is nothing at all bothering him, but her mother is even paler than before and pulls away from everyone. She still has difficulties spending time with Bertram, still struggles with even speaking to him, but at least she has stopped ignoring the child completely. Odile wishes that she would actually do something, that she would actually love the child, but love cannot be forced. But she is so bothered about the way that Bertram looks that there is no possibility to even forget the existence of the prince. It takes Odile some time to comb through her father's books, but eventually, she finds spells she thinks she can use to her advantage.

The magic she weaves is subtle, far subtler than the flashy spells her father so commonly uses. That is why even her parents don't notice what she is doing. With every song she sings to her brother, with every time her father picks him up or her mother even glances at the child, she is changing him. The spell ties the child into their family. The spell knows what it is supposed to do, and Odile lets it run its course.

With every incidence, something in Bertram becomes more like their family. Odile looks as his features start to remind them all more about her father than the prince, and even her father seems hesitant at points when he looks at the child and now sees his own face reflected in the child.

Her mother just seems relieved when Siegfried's face disappears and Wolfgang's grows on Bertram.

But Odile looks at her brother and wonders if she could have kept anything about the prince, if she could have let Bertram stay as he was born, but she knows that would have been too dangerous.

She tries to convince herself that she made the correct choice when she sees her father starting to love the child, when she sees her mother starting to accept him, when she sees how they manage to convince themselves that it was all just a big misunderstanding and Bertram always was Wolfgang's child.

But Odile knows the truth and keeps it hidden deep inside herself.

* * *

Bertram is a child who gets to grow up innocent and oh so happy. A few months are enough to change him into the perfect likeness to Wolfgang, and after that the spell is no longer needed. Odile lets out a sigh of relief as she looks at her younger brother and decides that she will fix everything.

There will be no mistakes like the ones her parents made during her childhood. There is always someone there when Bertram wakes up in the middle of the night, always someone to speak and sing and love him. Even when her mother accepts the son she never expected to have, true love is so hard for someone who has always associated love with pain.

Her father sometimes looks at Bertram for too long, but he never says anything aloud, and that is why Odile thinks she is getting away with it.

Bertram is barely a year old when he first shows signs of magic. His crying ends in happy giggling as the toy he wanted to have flies across the room and lands softly in his hands. Odile stares at her brother, and then she looks at her father who is working on his spell books.

"Did you see that?" Odile asks faintly. Her father looks up and nods. He studies Bertram for a brief moment, but there is only calm acceptance in his eyes.

"It is no wonder he is showing signs of magic so early," her father says. "After all these years, your mother is a being of pure magic herself."

"And our blood," Odile says. Her father sighs and lays down the pen. He looks suddenly so much older.

"You don't have to pretend with me, Odile," he chastises her with words that are not angry, simply tired. Her father looks helpless for a moment. "Your spell is appreciated, but I know who his true father is."

Odile swallows thickly and looks at her hands. She can feel tears burning in her eyes and she blinks them away furiously.

"I thought it would be easier for all," she says in a small voice. Her father gets up and lifts Bertram easily into his arms. The boy giggles. He does not know how horrible the conversations in this house can be. He is still too small to understand even if there are a few words he knows how to say.

His first word was Odile. His second word was papa. Odile is hoping his third word will be mama, but she also knows how unlikely that is going to be what with her mother spending so much time alone in the shadows of the forest, hiding from them and the world, locked away in her innermost thoughts.

"Odette will learn to love him eventually," her father says in a certain voice, but how he has come to that conclusion Odile will never understand. She can only stare at her father in bewilderment.

Her father studies Bertram's face curiously and weaves a spell of his own over the child's face. For a moment, Siegfried's features shine through, and then they are gone again.

"She will come to love him eventually."

* * *

Odile keeps an eye on her mother and how she interacts with Bertram. Those moments are still half-hearted, but now she at least tries to be a mother to him instead of just disappearing. Odile wonders if her father has said something to her.

Odile wonders if her mother is even sane anymore as she looks at the torn hem of her dress and the hair that is escaping its tight confines and the eyes that are always closed off from everyone, eyes that never open up even to her father.

One day, Odile just blurts out the question:

"What is your problem?"

Her mother looks up at her and then she looks at Bertram. He is playing with toy blocks and has seemingly just invented how fun it is to throw those blocks across the lawn and then bring them back with a determined frown. Every time he manages to do so, he claps enthusiastically and looks in their direction to confirm that they saw what he was doing.

"I wish I knew," her mother says in her quiet voice. Her head is leaning a bit towards her right shoulder as she studies Bertram.

They are both quiet for a long moment.

"The villagers are saying you have gone mad after having him," Odile tells her. Odette doesn't seem to care, but after all, she so rarely cares about anything.

Odile wishes she could just grab her mother from her shoulders and shake some sense into her, but then she would have to explain her burst of anger to her father and even the thought of that is too tiring to entertain the thought any longer.

"I wanted him to look like Siegfried," Odette murmurs. Her voice is far away, as if she were dreaming. "I want to remember what happened. I need to remember how it ended, and now I don't know what the truth is."

Odile feels sick to her stomach. Her mother remains deep in those thoughts of hers that she never reveals to anyone, and nothing on her face betrays her true age. She still looks youthful, still looks far too young to be the mother of someone who is already ready to marry herself, but that is how it always will be.

Odile knows her mother will never grow old. She has been changed too much by magic even if she refuses to acknowledge it herself and pretends that there is no power running through her veins and waiting to burst from her fingertips.

When she looks at her mother, Odile wonders if this all has been her fault after all.

* * *

People start visiting their house again, and with dinner parties and occasional afternoon visitors come young men who seem to be intent on trying to catch Odile all by herself. Thankfully her parents never allow anything like that to happen, but Odile knows that eventually someone will say the words she has been having nightmares about for the past two years.

One day, her father approaches her in the library. He takes a seat with Bertram in his lap and looks at Odile for such a long time that she already knows that something difficult is about to come.

"Are none of them interesting enough for you?" her father asks. Odile stares at her book in a loss and wonders how she could ever explain how she feels about marriage without hurting her father or sounding like she is a petulant child.

Whenever she thinks of marriage, she thinks of Siegfried, the prince with the bright smile, the boy who was a fool. Whenever she has young men visiting and trying to catch her eye, she always sees Siegfried in the corner of her eye and is reminded by the night when her anger caught up with her.

If she lets herself get hurt like that, what will she do the next time?

"Why would I like any of them?" she instead poses the question to her father. He mulls on the matter for a while. Bertram is thankfully content enough to babble to himself that her father has the time to think about it.

"There are good conversationalists among them, and some of them are certainly easy on the eyes," her father notes dryly. Odile sighs and crosses her arms over her chest.

"Most of them are dull or horribly conceited," Odile mutters. "And they only want me because I'm pretty."

"Then you'll have to find someone for yourself that won't be dull and isn't only drawn to you for the wrong reasons," her father declares. Odile frowns.

"But what if I don't want to marry?"

Her father is quiet for a long while as he considers the question. He seems unsettled by it.

"I didn't want to marry before I met your mother," he eventually says. Odile looks at her lap.

He does not understand the problem after all. He does not understand how Odile dreams of a ballroom and a waltz that made her feel dizzy, how she dreams of strong arms, of a smile that shone brighter than the sun. He does not understand how Odile misses the idea of her youthful happiness, how now all those thoughts seem wrong.

She is no longer an innocent child. She is a murderer. How could she ever marry anyone if she already has blood on her hands? How could she ever marry anyone and be happy in a life where she would have to hide her magic and act like a pretty little wife, just like her father has tried to force her mother into acting?

"Do you truly think I'll ever find someone who means as much to me as much as mama meant to you?" Odile asks quietly. _Do you really think I'll find someone like that again?_

Her father smiles.

"It is quite a strange world," he muses. "Who knows who'll catch your eye?"

* * *

Odile has barely left the house ever since her brother was born, but one day, she grows too bored with the sight of the lake and decides that Bertram needs something other in his life than just the sight of those endless trees and the glistening water.

The carriage ride to the village is peaceful enough. Bertram is already starting to walk all by himself, but he does get tired quickly. Odile could have probably walked to the village had she wanted, but with Bertram in tow, it's better to take the carriage.

It is the market day, and the village is packed with people. Odile politely greets some of the people she knows, but she has her hands full with trying to make sure that Bertram does not run away. More than that, she struggles with hiding his magic from anyone else.

Bertram's eyes are wide as Odile coos at him and talks to him about this and that. The sellers also adore his round red cheeks and the angelic look he has. The little toddling tyke is enough to melt most people's hearts, and enough to make certain young men stay away from Odile.

Eventually, Bertram's eye is caught by a beautiful wooden rocking horse. Odile is quick to follow her brother's insistent tugging and she nods respectfully at the master woodcarver.

"Horsey!" Bertram cheers. Odile sighs and looks at the woodcarver.

"Do you mind if my brother takes a test ride?" she asks. The woodcarver, an older gentleman with crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, nods indulgently.

Odile lifts Bertram up on the horse and watches as he babbles happily. A soft smile rises to her lips.

She wonders how her brother would react were she to ever transform into a swan in front of him, but perhaps it's better to not do something like that. After all, they are much more social nowadays than they were in her childhood and Bertram does not yet know any better.

Bertram plays with the rocking horse enough that Odile concludes that her brother will throw a horrible fit if that horse does not come home with them. That makes her reach for her purse and pay for the toy. The master woodcarver smiles indulgently as he gives a few smaller coins back, and then he whistles.

His apprentice is a young man with brown eyes and brown hair, and the first thing he does is greet Odile with a warm handshake before kneeling and greeting Bertram with a similar hand shake. Bertram is delighted enough by this new game that he forgets all about the rocking horse for at least twenty seconds, just enough that Odile manages to scoop him up. When he realises the game isn't any longer than that, his lower lip starts to wobble terribly.

"Horsey?" he looks at Odile with those deceptively large eyes of his.

"Don't worry, dear brother," Odile laughs, "the nice man has given the horsey to you."

Bertram's head nearly whips around as he looks at the master woodcarver and his apprentice.

"Thank!" he declares in a loud voice. The apprentice laughs a little as he lifts the rocking horse easily and follows as Odile shows him the way to their carriage.

"I thought at first you were his mother," the apprentice says. "You look so natural with him."

Odile smiles as Bertram reaches over to pet the rocking horse.

"No," she notes easily enough. "We're just close."

The apprentice lifts the toy into the carriage and looks at it curiously.

"Well, perhaps I'll see you at another market day, miss," he says with a bright smile. Odile smiles back at him.

"Perhaps you will," she says and actually means it for a change.

* * *

The next time Odile decides to leave the house, it happens to be another market day. This time, however, she does not bring Bertram with her. Instead, she walks to the village with a basket of her own, wondering idly whether the woodcarver and his apprentice will be there again.

The bustle and hustle of the village is enough to push aside all her asinine thoughts. Odile chats with merchants and lets them sweet-talk to her, and she accepts some of their offers. There are beautiful fabrics in dark jewel tones, and Odile looks at them and her black dress, and then she buys a bolt of dark red wool.

She is tired of dressing in mourning. She is tired of sorrow.

The woodcarver's apprentice surprises her as she is enjoying a hearty meal in the tavern.

"I thought I saw you at the market," he notes cheerfully as he sits down in the same table. "Has your brother enjoyed his horse?"

Odile finds herself responding to him kindly, and she is even more surprised when the conversation is enough to hold her attention for long enough that she manages to completely lose all track of time. At one point, she hears the bells ringing, and with a shock realises how long she has been away.

The woodcarver's apprentice looks at her sheepishly.

"I think I need to go before my father comes to find me and whoops me," the apprentice says.

"What's your name?" Odile asks curiously.

"Roland," he says. "And yours?"

Odile tells without a second doubt and waves cheerfully as Roland leaves the tavern with a smile and a wave in her direction.

* * *

Her mother is the first to notice the pattern of Odile leaving the house during market days. She gives Odile a curious look, but she does nothing.

Her father is a whole different case. Odile thinks he has not even noticed when she leaves to the market that day in winter, wrapped in her warm red cloak and already wondering if Roland and his father will have toys for sale that Bertram would like.

Her steps are hurried as she makes her way to the village, and not once does she look behind herself.

Roland is there, and so is his father. Odile greets them both with a smile and browses their wares until she finds a present for her brother. The master woodcarver accepts her payment without a comment and looks at his son, already knowing the question that will come.

"Go," Roland's father sighs. "Be young, but be here by closing time."

Roland nods seriously and then starts talking Odile's ear off. She laughs at his stories of what his brothers have been doing, and they browse the marketplace together, curiously studying all the things the winter market has to offer to those with money to spare.

Odile sees a familiar dark figure further away and she stops on her tracks. Roland nearly trips on his feet and follows her gaze to where her father is standing, and he gives Odile a blank look as her father starts approaching them.

"Is this young man the reason why you've been unusually willing to leave the house?" her father asks. The tone could easily be mistaken for frosty, but Odile knows her father better than that.

Roland doesn't. He takes one look at her father's fancy clothes and his seemingly serious demeanour and thinks that their tentative friendship has ended.

"I apologise, sir," Roland is quick to say. "It was not my intention to be disrespectful."

Her father raises his eyebrow just a little and looks at Odile. She answers the stare easily enough.

"Father, this is Roland," Odile says. "Roland, this is my father, Wolfgang von Rothbart."

Odile gives hasty goodbyes to a shaking Roland. He bows out of the conversation and is quick to head to the stall, his tail tucked between his legs. Her father's eyes follow Roland's path.

A small smile breaks on her father's lips.

"The woodcarver's son," he muses quietly. Odile pulls his arm and makes him leave the market with her.

"Not another word," she warns her father.

He does not say another word, but she can blatantly see the curiosity in his eyes.

* * *

Winter passes onto spring. Odile goes to the market place each month.

Roland is always there with a smile and more stories to tell.

Slowly, Odile forgets about the night she danced with a prince.

* * *

Eventually, summer arrives and with it a thousand blooming flowers. The villagers arrange the same festival that has been arranged every year for a hundred years or more, and Odile goes there in a pale pink dress.

Roland looks at her with soft eyes and shyly asks her to dance. At first, Odile hesitates, but when she looks at the boy in front of her, she only sees his gentle brown eyes and the slight hope in them.

She accepts his hand with a smile. Nothing about the dance reminds her about another time she danced with another boy. The music is much faster, there are other people all around them, and her dress does not already bode sorrow to anyone.

Roland makes her laugh so easily and he dances with her so much that her feet ache, but Odile's cheeks ache even more from all that smiling and laughing.

At the end of the evening, Roland takes her to the fork in the road where the path to her home begins. He weaves a flower into her hair and looks at her, and then she rises to her toes and kisses him.

He is left wondering as she flushes pink all around and rushes quickly home. Her mother is waiting for her. She gives Odile a knowing look and then moves just the tiniest bit that Bertram wakes up to say goodnight to his sister.

Odile goes to her room and carefully extracts the flower from her hair and sets it into a vase. She looks at the flower and closes her eyes and hopes it never wilts as long as Roland's smile makes her feel like this.

Tomorrow, she decides, tomorrow she will kiss him again.


End file.
